A gaming news site has recently come under fire for a heavy conflict of …

Share this story

Sometimes, even if there is no conflict of interest or corruption going on in news, the perception that there might be a guiding hand behind editorial or reviews can be enough to damage the reputation of a site. Full disclosure is incredibly important, and if readers get the whiff of something being kept from them, there is often hell to pay.

Such is the odd tale of GameCyte, a new gaming site that seems to be suffering the mother of all problems with disclosure: it's owned by a gentleman named Richard Kain. You might not know that name, but all gaming writers know the name TriplePoint, a PR company that handles clients such as EA Mythic, D3 Publisher, and Nyko. Kain is also the General Manager of that company. In other words, his gaming site is running stories and reviews on games that his PR company is paid to make popular.

Can you play both sides against the middle?

We asked Kain point blank if it was ethical for him to publish a game news and review site with his strong financial interest in the industry. "If the product is independent, then of course," he told Ars.

This issue came to light when Joystick Division, the gaming blog of the Village Voice, dug into the background of the site, and found that the domain was registered using domain privacy services that obscured who owned the site. The link between TriplePoint PR and Pantheon Labs, the LLC that Kain owns that GameCyte operates under, is even stronger than it at first appears: the site's writers are all ex-employees of TriplePoint, and while, by Kain's own admission, the writers mostly work from home, they sometimes use the TriplePoint offices to conduct business meetings.

If you think the layers can't get any deeper, just wait. The site gave a glowing review to Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People. That's not rare; it's a fun and amusing title, but the problem is, again, the lack of disclosure. Telltale Games used to be a client of TriplePoint, but the relationship is much deeper than that: Kain is an investor in the Telltale games.

This presents a quagmire of ethical issues that went completely unaddressed by the site; there is no disclosure of any kind in the review. Kain is willing to accept full responsibility on this issue. "I was in huge error to not disclose that I own some Telltale shares. I had too cavalierly assumed that because I was not involved in the article, it's not material; I didn't influence the article," he told Ars. "For that matter I didn't tell [the writer] I owned Telltale shares for fear of influencing him. Looking at how other sites treat this where proprietors have investments I see that's still not up to snuff. I have listed all my video game investments and in the future writers will mention that if an article touches on them."

We contacted Telltale games, and the company was unaware of the issue until earlier this week. "We look at GameCyte like any other site, and we deal with many sites... I don't know who owns any of them," Dan Connors, the CEO of Telltale Games told Ars. "I don't think there's any evil corporate thing happening here." He points to the quality of the games Telltale releases; a good game getting a positive review is slight evidence for any wrongdoing, and he doesn't feel like this issue should reflect poorly on the company.

"When we met with them, there was nothing that was sketchy," Emily Morganti, the marketing coordinator for Telltale said. "There was nothing strange with the interaction. All game sites are owned by a bigger entity. It's up to the gaming site to maintain the editorial's integrity."

The most important lesson: disclose, disclose, disclose

Kain does stress that disclosure is an open topic at the site. "We clearly have to err on the side of doing even more disclosure than is perhaps standard in the future to ensure the reputation of the site survives," he tells Ars. "I want to be thoughtful about this and we're making changes as we think them through. What they, or anyone else who joins the site, may not do is write on something they had promoted in the past."

The about page now features more disclosure, but none appears in the articles

This story is a bit of a PR problem, especially now that the names of clients and past associations are involved in a story about a conflict of interest. It also appears as if the site has been invited to events or demos that provided strong coverage opportunities, which is rare for a gaming site of its size—Kain claims it has just 62,000 unique readers per month.

Kain seemed to bristle at the implication that he's using his PR connections to get stories. "[The writers have] done a ton of reviews with Nokia. Nokia is not a client," Kain told Joystick Division. A quick search shows Nokia used to be a client.

"But Nintendo feels the site is big enough," he goes on. Yet again, however, one finds a connection with TriplePoint. Julia Roether, TriplePoint's Vice President, has a history with the company. "Prior to joining TriplePoint, [Roether] worked for Golin/Harris where she oversaw public relations activities for Nintendo in the United States," her bio reads.

Kain again addressed these points directly, and publicly in the story's comments. "I do stand corrected: Nokia was a client briefly three years ago for some N-Gage titles. Julia did work for Nintendo's PR firm a year ago but had no role in getting a couple of free Wii points."

What happens now?

Ars asked Kain if he believed GameCyte now has a damaged reputation. "That is an unfortunate possibility which I bear responsibility for. So far, according to Jesse and Sean, we haven't seen any impact in the willingness to take their calls. Time will tell, and the answer will be whether people read GameCyte and see the quality, diversity and independence of their work, and we better announce any relationships that could possibly be of concern," he said. "I understand the furor, it was avoidable because the inference of corruption isn't accurate and I could have easily solved that in advance."

It's this main point where Kain still doesn't seem to understand the reaction of many gamers: even with no direct evidence of editorial corruption, the conflict of interest is massive, and the disclosures may have to be nearly constant. If TriplePoint sits down with a publisher in hopes of representing it, do they have to disclose to the potential client the editorial coverage from GameCyte, or do they have to put the disclosure of potential business relationships in editorial coverage of those games?

Ars Technica has dealt with both TriplePoint employees and their clients extensively in the past, and have never seen even a hint of unethical conduct in the way we have been treated. Richard Kain has also been nothing but open and forthright in dealing with this story. The close ties of the two companies, however, is hard to get past; the possibility of editorial pressure seems like it would be ever-present. Kain believes the site will speak for itself. "Moving forward, I can't think of a media outlet that doesn't have some accusation of bias, and they go on."